Maria Grachvogel, Dark and Glamourous

By Beth Schepens

It seems fitting that one of the first shows of London Fashion Week should take place at the newly reopened Savoy Hotel, even more so that it should be Maria Grachvogel’s elegant autumn/winter collection.

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The Savoy’s multimillion-dollar makeover has rendered the iconic London hotel a modern classic yet again; Ms. Grachvogel’s mix of 1940s draping and tribal shaman prints has the same effect.

Her long tailored dresses, fitted trousers and billowing blouses looked as if they had walked out of Lauren Bacall’s wardrobe circa “The Big Sleep,” while the swirling psychedelic prints mimicking owl’s feathers and the tricks played on the eye and body with just a touch of some needle and thread place the looks firmly in the present, which apparently is still having a bit of a ’70s moment.

“Last season I was feeling very pared down, very minimal,” the designer, who once sent Victoria Beckham down her catwalk, said after the show.

“This season I was feeling very dark, very powerful, very strong. In that Cruella de Vil kind of way, where she is a little bit dark, a bit sinister, but she’s also impossibly glamorous. And she’s just got a strong sense of herself and her own style.”

Seeming to embody that vision herself, Ms. Grachvogel has based her nearly 20-year-old label on the idea that her clothes would be for “all women–women of all heights, all shapes.” And when she recently became a mom, she said she learned that it was actually true. “I didn’t have to buy a single maternity thing. I just wore stuff that was actually in my wardrobe.”

Comments (2 of 2)

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